What Trump victory means: for the economy

Forget the polite terms about changed direction or Rust Belt demographics. America’s economic leadership is a smoking ruin. Global leaders can’t believe Donald Trump is at the controls with a stash of nonsensical populist nostrums.

Take free trade. Trump campaigned and won on a pitch that denies a globalized economy in favor of shredding trade deals and turning back the tide. The giant 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership — generally favored by Republicans — is dead. NAFTA, which has linked the U.S. with Mexico and Canada for two decades, may come undone. Hello tariffs and goodbye imports. The real wall, not the one along the border with Mexico, is about to go up.

Trump is taking the country into a lopsided financial world. The positives — low unemployment, job growth and economic expansion — are buried in his wild populist calls for protectionism. Serious stuff like financial inequality and tax reform are ignored with rhetoric about punishing corporations and job-seeking immigrants. Bank stocks are soaring in a belief that Dodd-Frank financial controls will be lifted for Wall Street.

It gets worse. The Affordable Care Act will be hammered as never before despite 16 million more people obtaining health coverage. Republicans in control of both the Senate and House finally have the votes and White House to demolish it. Neither congressional GOP leaders nor the president-elect have a substitute in the offing. That’s one way to toss health care right back to insurance firms and drugmakers.

More Election 2016

Climate-change concerns will be dismissed with more drilling, pipelines and coal. President Obama’s executive orders to curb emissions and transform energy production can be undone with Trump’s signature. The science proving the dangers of rising temperatures is just a myth, the next president says.

The shadow cast over green tech and renewable energy will be major. California’s plans to lean on solar and wind will continue. But with no encouragement or hard rules from Trump’s team, that message won’t travel far. Much of country will flip on the lights with coal-fired electricity and drive to work using dirtier gasoline.

Maybe Trump voters don’t mind any of this. Maybe they don’t care about his lack of preparedness and vision, and want only to send a defiant, unhappy message. But the result sets the table for a disastrous future that darkens the country’s economy and its stature in the world. It won’t make America great again.